Hatching Easter

by Alan Mansager

Young voices squeal with delight as little “private eyes” search caches for tasty blue, gold, and green treasures hidden among trees and in grassy knolls. “I found one,” a fiveyear-old excitedly chirps, grabbing the oval booty. “Me too,” his friend chimes in, splitting the tall grass to reveal a cellophane-cloaked chocolate rabbit.

The scene is common in April as communities across the nation host Easter egg hunts in city parks with local churches joining the ritual. The rite is as old as the hills, reaching back to the ancient hills of Babylon and its fertility worship.

Ask why they indulge in this spring tradition, the parents of participating youngsters will shrug and say, “It’s for the kids. We did it when we were young and we want the children to have fun, we don’t ask why.”

Followers of the Bible must ask, why? Isn’t Easter billed as a religious observance? Don’t even those who hardly ever attend church reluctantly show up on Easter Sunday? If Easter is religious, what’s with the eggs and the rabbits, the parades and the hot-cross buns? Did Yahshua’s disciples eat jelly beans, dye eggs, and search for chocolate rabbits on Easter morning?

Eastera’s Fertile Hybrid

The following fact from a standard encyclopedia should jar the conscience of every Bible-professing, church-goer today:

“Early Christians celebrated the Jewish feasts. The New Testament contains no reference to distinctively Christian festivals.” (Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Reference Encyclopedia, 1966 ed., vol. 10, p. 3461).

Early Believers Kept Feast Days

The questions begging for answers are, why did the very early New Testament believers continue to keep the Old Testament holy days, and why aren’t today’s most venerated observances like Easter in the Bible?

A common human urge is to tamper with what is already well and good. In Exodus 12, Leviticus 23, and Deuteronomy 16 Yahweh gave man seven annual observances, beginning with the Passover. These were to be kept “forever, throughout your generations” as part of a covenant between us and our Creator.

But these observances were apparently not good enough for New Testament churchmen. They wanted to fashion their own celebrations in the image of what they thought was good. They didn’t like those old “Jewish” days anyway.

Easter grew from just such an environment.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica reveals, “Unlike the cycle of feasts and fasts of the Jewish Law, the Christian year has never been based upon a divine revelation. It is rather a tradition that is always subject to change by ecclesiastical law,” vol. 4, p. 601.

This source says about the Sabbath, “From the beginning, the church took over from Judaism the seven-day week. Before the end of the apostolic age (first century CE), as the church became predominantly Gentile in membership, the first day of the week, or Sunday, had become the normative time when Christians assembled for their distinctive acts of worship, in commemoration of the L-rd’s Resurrection” (Ibid.).

Sunday in Honor of the Sun

As the early Romish church welcomed more and more Gentiles, it adhered increasingly to Sunday, the veneration day of the heathen who worshiped the sun deity. This church gradually switched over its observance of the Passover to Sunday as well. It was often easier to incorporate aspects of their pagan worship than to try to convert the heathen Gentiles.

“The earliest Christian celebrated the L-rd’s Passover at the same time as the Jews, during the night of the first full moon of the first month of spring (Nisan 14-15). By the middle of the 2nd century, most churches had transferred this celebration to the Sunday after the Jewish feast. But certain churches of Asia Minor clung to the older custom, for which they were denounced as ‘Judaizing’” (Ibid).

“Eusebius further says that the churches of Asia Minor derived their custom of observing the pascha [passover] from the Apostles John and Philip. Without a doubt Christian elements were incorporated into the celebration. It was not a question of whether a day corresponding to the Passover should be celebrated, but a question of the time at which it was to be celebrated,” The New SchaffHerzog Religious Encyclopedia, vol. 4, p. 44.

Fiddling with the Biblical Calendar

To break clean from the Jews, the Roman Church took the first in a long list of shocking liberties. Two calendars were extant in the fourth century – the biblical lunar calendar and the Egyptian solar calendar. Judaism held to the lunar reckoning while Rome adopted the Egyptian calculations based on the sun.

Rome wished to adjust the lunar calendar that established Passover to the solar year so that everyone could observe Easter on Sunday.

“Anxiety over the date of Easter was thus a reason why Constantine the Great in 325 A.D. summoned the famous council of Nicaea. It was decided that Easter must be celebrated everywhere on the same day and this day must be a Sunday. It must be the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox, March 21, with one reservation: In the English prayer book it is stated thus: ‘and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter-day is the Sunday after.’ The reason for this exception reveals

Why the Name ‘Easter ’?

“It is well known that the name ‘Easter’ is not a Christian expression – not in its original meaning. The word itself, as the dictionaries and encyclopedias explain, came from the name of a Pagan Goddess – the goddess of spring. Easter is but a more modern form of Ishtar, Eostre, Osatera, or Astarte. Ishtar, another name for Semiramis of Babylon, was pronounced as we pronounce ‘Easter’ today...Not only is the name ‘Easter’ of pagan origin, but we shall see that the traditional customs and observances of this season originated in paganism also.” the depth of the division between the Church and the Synagogue. For whenever the full moon fell on a Sunday, Easter would be celebrated on the same day as the Hebrew Passover. Hence, the postponement for a week, to avoid the coincidence,” Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 9, p. 507.

(Babylon Mystery Religion, Ancient and Modern, Woodrow). Image: Goddess Ishtar on an Akkadian empire seal, 2350-2150 BCE. She is equipped with weapons on her back, has a horned helmet, and is trampling a lion held on a leash. She was the goddess of beauty, love, war, justice, and fertility to the ancient Mesopotamian heathen.

The Christian church wanted a Holy Week beginning with Palm Sunday, proceeding to Good Friday and ending on Easter Sunday, commemorating the supposed resurrection on Sunday. Never mind that there is no mention of any of these days in either Old or New testaments. It was all the result of a church council’s ruling.

The following, from History of the Church Through the Ages (Brumback), admonishes, “Watch the work of the councils. New doctrines were being advocated by those who were seeking for prominence. When a council would later be called the matter would be placed before the council and a vote taken and thus a doctrine foreign to G-d’s word would be bound upon the church. Had there been no councils, no conferences, and if people had been content to take G-d’s word as their guide there would have been no apostasy…Weak-minded people might have made changes through ignorance, but responsibility for these changes rests upon the ecclesiastical dignitaries, upon the clergy who forced these things upon the people,” p. 40.

A Strange Mix

Through the influence of converts from mystery religions, this newfound but ancient celebration called Easter took on abominable customs.

The name Easter itself comes from Eastre or Estera, a Teutonic dawn deity of love to whom sacrifice was offered in April. She traces back to the goddess Inanna, daughter of Anu, the supreme mighty one in Sumerian times before the Old Babylonian period.

The Babylonians called her Ishtar (note the similar pronunciation to “Easter”), the goddess of love and fertility. The worship of Ishtar through fertility rites carries over to the egg and the rabbit symbolism of the modern Easter celebration.

Easter sunrise services trace directly to the worship of Eastre or Estera, the dawn deity. Ancient pagans worshiped the sun, which they saw as the sustainer of life.

The Savior was not resurrected Sunday morning, but was already gone when the women visited the tomb Sabbath evening. The word “dawn” in Matthew 28:1 is epiphosko, meaning “draw on to.” This was the end of the Sabbath at sundown, not Sunday morning.

Ironically, Yahweh has strong words against indulging in the only worship ceremony that many will ever attend, Easter sunrise services: queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other deities, that they may provoke me to anger,” verse 18. The word for “cakes” is from the Hebrew kawan, literally the word bun.

“And he brought me into the inner court of Yahweh’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahweh, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east. Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them,” Ezekiel 8:16-18.

In Jeremiah 10:2, Yahweh warns us not to learn the ways of the heathen.

We must never borrow pagan customs and incorporate them into any worship of Yahweh. That’s a direct violation of the first two commandments that reserve worship of Yahweh and only Him alone.

The cross placed on today’s hot cross buns among other things is the symbol for woman (see cross, p. 13). In hieroglyphics the cross means living or life and is the worship of life and fertility that Easter of yesterday and today glorifies.

Choose True Worship

In a day when more and more churchgoers know less and less about the Bible they profess to follow, Almighty Yahweh gives us a choice. We can continue in darkness or we can leave the abominations of man and come clean, a pure bride ready to join the coming Savior for an everlasting life in His Kingdom.

Ignorance Allowed Apostasy

How was it possible that this happened?

“The answer is found in the failure of those who were the people of the L-rd to know what G-d’s word taught. Lack of this knowledge made it possible to introduce new doctrines and new practices into the teaching and worship of the church. The apostasy of the church and the corruption of the gospel resulted from neglect of the church to study G-d’s word,” Brumback, p. 19.

The hot-cross buns so popular at Easter are just one legacy of paganism, condemned in Jeremiah 7 when Judah was perpetuating the practice. “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the

The true follower of the Word finds mixing pure worship with ancient rites of mystery religions repugnant. This conviction is upheld in the Word of Almighty Yahweh.

“And what agreement has the Temple of Elohim with idols? For you are the Temple of the living Elohim; as Elohim has said, ‘I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their Elohim, and they shall be My people.’ Wherefore ‘come out from among them, and be separate,’ says Yahweh, ‘and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,’ “ 2Corinthians 6:1617.

Pure worship is described as a narrow, more taxing and challenging road, and few will be walking on it. But the rewards for those who do will be indescribable!